By VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, June 15, 2010

On a recent night, Shelley Larkin-Krebs and her husband were looking forward to dinner at Bastille Café & Bar, where French 75s are a bar specialty, the Fricassée de Poulet comes with heirloom spinach and picholine olives, and the dining room exudes old-world Paris.

In other words, a place for grown-ups. But here was a toddler who kept springing out of her seat and doing laps around the tables.

"She did it over and over and over again," said Larkin-Krebs, a 55-year-old trucking logistics coordinator from Edmonds. "We dropped a hundred-some-odd dollars, and I don't want to see that. It ruins the dinner."

"I don't understand why parents would bring their child to a restaurant like that. It's almost like they have an attitude like they're more privileged than people who don't have children."

There. The gauntlet has been thrown down. In Seattle, a city with one of the lowest rates of children in the country, the divide between breeders and non-breeders has long run deep. There's generally enough here to keep people content and distinct -- great nightlife and activities, great playgrounds and schools -- but the one place people overlap is restaurants, and not always happily.

Sure, there are restaurants that offer high chairs and crayons, where the tolerance for shrieking toddlers and food on the floor tends to be higher. But there's been a proliferation of places that welcome kids and offer good food, or at least food that doesn't come with happy meals and cartoon themes.

And it's these intersections where, if the rants on Yelp are any indication, Seattle's passive-aggressive claws come out.

'More like a day care than an Ale House'

"Everyone said the dinner, especially the burger, was amazing, but...BUT...damn it if I didn't walk away thinking this place felt more like a day care, or a Sunday School, than a neighborhood eatery and 'Ale House'…"

And here's Sara A. critiquing on Yelp the All Purpose Pizza & Ale House, a Central District pizzeria appreciated for handmade sourdough pies and kids' play area (which comes complete with wads of dough):

"I know that most parents can block out the deafening drone of toddlers crying & playing, but I cannot."

As dining out has become more common and less formal, many diners say more parents are also bringing their offspring to kid-inappropriate places -- romantic cafes, candlelit bistros -- than parents did a generation ago.

"Now it seems like it's a real common thing that the kids come out," said Jones, who does not have kids.

"It's almost like parents are being selfish -- they want to go out to dinner, and they're going to take the kids, regardless of whether the kids are willing to sit there. It's very inconsiderate to everyone else."

He said parents have "tried to pressure" the bar into becoming family-friendly over the years, to no avail. One reason for resistance: The bar's layout. Allowing underage patrons would mean having to create separate bar and dining spaces.

The other reason is children.

"Nothing against people with kids, but it's a nice, quiet place to have dinner," said Weakland, whose boss also owns the 21-and-over Hilltop and 74th Street Ale Houses.

"We kind of cater to that."

'Can't imagine not allowing families'

But many restaurant owners say they enjoy serving families, and that parents deserve a night out with their kids and good food.

"I can't imagine not allowing families to come in here," said Todd Carden, co-owner of Elliott Bay Brewery & Pub, a West Seattle fave among families. "I don't see why people would want to be restrictive in these times."

But he acknowledged a need for a special touch in serving families. He tries to seat rugrats and non-breeders apart. His servers ask parents if they want to put their kids' orders in first. And if a kid is melting down, one of Carden's servers is likely to swing by with extra crayons or crackers.

"I think it's really easy to point the finger at kids and say kids are the problem," Carden said. "But it's not just kids. It can be the guy who's had too many beers, or somebody who's not happy with the way their burger came out."

But every once in a while, Steadmon has to march to a table of rowdy kids to give a stern, gentle lecture -- to the parents.

"I put my hands on my hips and say, 'Whose children are these?'" she said. "And you can always tell who the parents are, because they'll duck down into their seats."

And not all diners get cranky about children. Laura Zahn has two older sons who can now handle themselves in public, but recalled a time when she abruptly left a restaurant after her boys acted up.

She urged compassion.

"You don't know what's going on in these people's lives. When I was child-free, I used to look at kids having meltdowns in grocery stores and think, 'Bad parenting,'" said Zahn, who is written a book on parenting.